Shakespeare's Globe Sam Wanamaker winter season to feature Ella Hickson, Sandi Toksvig and more

Shakespeare's Globe has announced a new winter season for the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

Ella Hickson, writer of ANNA, The Writer and Oil, will premiere her new play Swive [Elizabeth]. Exploring power dynamics and the nature of sex in the midst of a patriarchal society headed by a female monarch, the piece will be directed by Natalie Abrahami and runs from 6 December to 15 February.

Sandi Toksvig and Jenifer Toksvig will create a new children's show Christmas at the (Snow) Globe. Using song, laughter and mulled wine, the play runs from 19 to 23 December.

The venue's artistic director Michelle Terry will appear as part of an ensemble cast in The Taming of the Shrew running from 1 February to 18 April. Lila Clements, Mattia Mariotti and Melissa Riggall also appear in the piece, directed by We Are Raw Materials collective founder Maria Gaitanidi. Running in rep will be a production of Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women, directed by Amy Hodge.

Opening the season will be productions of Shakespeare's history plays Henry VI and Richard III, directed by Sean Holmes and Ilinca Radulian. Henry VI will be played as a single performance, with the two shows completing a cycle of history plays started with Richard II at the Wanamaker at the start of the year. The pair run from 5 November to 26 January 2020.

The ensemble for the double bill will feature Sarah Amankwah, Philip Arditti, Nina Bowers, Jonathan Broadbent, Leaphia Darko, Steffan Donnelly, Colin Hurley, Sophie Russell, and Helen Schlesinger.

Special events across the season include a reading of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas, and a a ghost story series entitled Deep Night, Dark Night: Tales from Beyond the Grave.